Following a New Year's blowout bash that was framed as the end of an era, it looks like the Tenderloin's Phoenix Hotel isn't dead after all, and, in fact, remains open for business.

When the impending demise of the Phoenix Hotel was being discussed last summer, particularly around the Pride events that regularly happen there, I was skeptical that the place was really going to shutter so fast — just given that any development plans a property owner might have for the place are bound to take years to take shape. And, I was right to be skeptical, because Mission Local is now reporting that the hotel did not close, and its landlord is keeping the place open with a new operator.

That landlord is owner Michael Suas, of Thorough Bread & Pastry and b. Patisserie fame, who has owned the Phoenix Hotel since August 2024. And the move comes after some failed lease negotiations with the former operator, a partnership that was led by managing partner Isabel Manchester — who joined the group in 2011 and opened Chambers Eat + Drink. It's unclear what the ongoing business involvement of Phoenix founder Chip Conley was, though he maintained some stake and presided over the hotel's closing events, speaking about the closure to the Chronicle last June.

"Maybe if I had been smart, I would have bought the land a long time ago, but, at the end of the day, sometimes you have to say, ‘It’s been a beautiful experience and it’s time for it to have its fat lady sings opera moment,'" Conley said.

Conley left open the possibility that the Phoenix brand might be sold to a new proprietor, and said that lease negotiatons were only one reason he was giving the place up.

"To be quite honest, it’s not even just the lease terms, it’s the nature of the neighborhood," Conley said, adding, "We have come to a place where after 39 years — and I am turning 65 later this year — maybe it’s time for the Phoenix to retire."

Whatever the terms were, it seems that Suas was able to reach a last-minute agreement with hotel operator Binoy Patel, whose holdings include properties in Texas, and who earlier ran the now shuttered Civic Center Inn, closed since 2023.

Conley and his team's lease ended on January 31, and apparently the hotel has remained opened since then. Conley posted a series of limericks about the rock-and-roll hotel's closure on LinkedIn (One example: "Rockers, writers, and sinners alike/ Found refuge beneath neon light. / No pretense, no gate, / Just a come-as-you-are fate, / Where the real beat the curated and trite."), and Patel commented on the post, saying, "The Phoenix is alive and well!! Can’t wait for you to come and see what I will do next."

The restaurant, Chambers, does not seem to have live reservations available, and a booking link on the Phoenix website is broken. But Mission Local reports that the restaurant and bar appear to be chugging along.

Bookings at the hotel are live online, and you could get a room there tonight for $164 with a pool-party package that includes a bucket of beers and two koozies.

When the Phoenix property went up for sale in early 2024, it was listed for $15 million and its listing noted it was zoned for up to 80 feet, and could be developed into 450 residential units with the state's density bonus. At the time, the management was under the auspices of Bunkhouse Hotels, the youthful sister brand of The Standard, who reportedly had a lease running through September 2025.

Stay tuned for some sort of official relaunch of the Phoenix, which will no doubt occur before Pride season.

Previously: Phoenix Hotel Calling It Quits After 39 Years, But Will Remain Open for the Rest of 2025

The inevitable surge pricing is now underway as the Super Bowl tourists come pouring into SF (and Santa Clara), with some hotels up to nearly $2,500 a night, and some SF Airbnb units costing $2,000 for the weekend stay.

The tourists are already showing up in San Francisco for this weekend’s Super Bowl that is counterintuitively 50 miles away in Santa Clara, as tens of thousands of them are already here. With the influx now in progress, both NBC Bay Area and KTVU are covering the not-at-all-surprising development that hotels rooms and Airbnbs are costing substantially more money than usual this weekend, and have pretty much gone into Dreamforce-week price ranges.  

“The good news is there's still rates available,” Marriott Marquis general manager and SF Travel board chair John Anderson told KTVU. “They may be a little bit pricey as compression tends to build, but you can find a room anywhere between $700 to $2,400."

Other than the $700 to $2,400 figure quoted there, neither KTVU or NBC Bay Area offers much detail in terms of prices. So we ran our own searches to find how much hotel and Airbnb rooms in SF are really costing this weekend.

The screenshot above is from an Expedia search, and mind you we searched on a Friday through Monday three-night stay. So those are not single-night prices reflected above. And we do not see a single-night price as high as the $2,400 figure Anderson cited (though I’m sure they're out there, they just didn't show up on an Expedia search).

But the standout, most-expensive result is that $3,923 three-night stay in the lower left–hand corner, which is the Luma Hotel ($1,307 for a single night). But there’s cheaper deals in the Outer Sunset at the Ocean Inn and the Seascape Inn!

Airbnb units are more affordable, or at least, they were at our first glance. Results shown above are also Friday through Monday three-night stays. There are outliers at $2,200 for the weekend, but a fair number currently available at under $1,000 for the Super Bowl weekend.

KTVU adds that Airbnb searches in Santa Clara “surged more than 150 times” on that platform, which stands to reason, because why would people search on Santa Clara during the other 51 weeks of the year. NBC Bay Area adds that during the last Super Bowl held here in 2016, San Francisco hogged 57% of the overall money spent in the region during the Super Bowl week.

So this year the surrounding South Bay and East Bay communities are trying to claw in on some of that percentage, and you can’t blame them for trying to do so. But surrounding communities, just don’t go naming your airport “San Francisco.”

Related: Rumor Swirls That Taylor Swift Will Be In San Francisco for the Super Bowl [SFist]

Image: Jen K via Yelp

We’re just now learning the sale price of a hotel deal that happened three months ago, and SF’s largest hotel, the Hilton Union Square, plus the also-very-large Parc55, sold for $408 million, though they’d been worth $1.5 billion in 2016.

The SF Union Square hospitality industry was already in the dumps in mid-2023 when the city's largest hotel, the Hilton Union Square (333 O’Farrell Street), and the city’s fourth-largest Parc 55 hotel (55 Cyril Magnin Street), saw their owners default on a $723 million mortgage and abandon the properties. Both hotels then operated in limbo for more than two years, until September of this year, when NY-based luxury hotel operators Newbond Holdings and real estate lenders Conversant Capital stepped up and bought both hotels.

But the sale price had been redacted from the legal sale documents. Now, three months later, the SF Business Times reports that the sale price was actually $408 million for both hotels. The Business Times refers to this as the “biggest hotel deal of the year,” which of course it was, because it involves SF’s largest and fourth-largest hotels — which together account for 10% of all hotel rooms available in the city.

Though in dollar amounts, this is another fire-sale deal. As the Business Times points out, the combined properties were appraised in 2016 at a value of more than $1.5 billion, and sold for less than a third of that, at $408 million.

Either way, the downtown SF hospitality scene appears to be going in a positive direction again. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that a firm was buying the Four Seasons at 757 Market Street for $130 million.  

Newbond founding partner Vann Avedisian struck an optimistic note in a statement when the deal price on the Hilton and Parc55 became public. "These hotels, anchored in the heart of Union Square and backed by Hilton’s strong global brand, are uniquely positioned to benefit from San Francisco’s resurgence as a leading global destination, which is well underway thanks to Daniel Lurie’s leadership," Avedisian said in a statement to the Business Times. "That leadership was essential to us in making the investment.”

As you can tell by Avedisian’s choice of words about “backed by Hilton’s strong global brand,” the Hilton Union Square will probably remain named Hilton Union Square. But more significantly, the Hilton Union Square and Parc55 properties are going to remain hotels, and won't be converted to housing, as there’d been some speculation last year that they could be.

Related: Parc 55 and Hilton Union Square Hotels Finally Have a Buyer, After Two Long Years Languishing in Receivership [SFist]

Image: Hilton San Francisco Union Square via Yelp

SFs largest hotel, the Hilton Union Square, and the also very large Parc 55 have finally found an interested buyer, ending two years of limbo for a pair of SF’s most prominent downtown hotels.

The most embarrassing example of a trophy SF property that the owner had to default on remains the beleaguered former Westfield Mall that is now called the San Francisco Centre. That troubled mall’s auction was just delayed for the eighth time, now pushed to September 25, for unknown reasons that make it seem like there is scant interest in the property.

The second most embarrassing long-term languishing of defaulted properties are SF’s largest hotel the Hilton Union Square (333 O’Farrell Street) and the city’s fourth-largest Parc 55 hotel (55 Cyril Magnin Street). The owner of both hotels defaulted on their $725 million mortgage in 2023, and just abandoned the properties to their lenders. Both have sat without takers for more than two years, and have since seen their valuations were slashed in half.

But that long nightmare of receivership will apparently soon be over for both high-end hotels. The Chronicle reports both hotels have found a buyer — a collection of three New York-based hoteliers called Newbond and Conversant. The Chronicle had predicted the impending sale in June when they learned an unidentified buyer had signed a purchase-and-sale agreement.

“We think the sale of these hotels, which has been in the works for a while, is yet another indication that downtown San Francisco is on a great track,” an attorney for the court-appointed receiver told the Chronicle. On paper, the owner will be NB Acquisitions LLC, which is an affiliate of the three purchasing companies.

The sale price was redacted from the court documents in which the Chronicle made this discovery. The sale is not yet final, and won’t be until a September 25 court hearing (ironically, scheduled for the same day as the San Francisco Centre’s auction that probably won’t happen and will likely get delayed again).

You have probably never heard of Newbond or Conversant, as they have no properties in San Francisco. Newbond manages luxury hotel assets in New York and elswhere, and Conversant is more of a real estate lender.

The sale may be driven by San Francisco’s convention and tourism scene being on the upswing (despite fewer Canadian and Mexican tourists), plus we’ve got the Super Bowl and World Cup coming to the Bay Area next year. But the fact that these hotels are on the verge of being sold to hotelier companies means that the two hotels will probably not be converted to housing, as there had been some speculation last year that they would be.

Related: Owner of SF's Largest Hotel, the Hilton Union Square, Is Walking Away, Surrendering It to Lender [SFist]

Image: Hilton San Francisco Union Square via Yelp

*This story has been updated to reflect that the firm Witkoff is not involved with this deal.

OG celebrity chef Charlie Palmer, who opened Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg in 2003 and has had a big hand in putting the tony wine country town on the proverbial map, is still making moves in his hometown.

After making a name for himself in the 1980s and 90s in New York City with restaurants like Aureole, Charlie Palmer settled down in Healdsburg, California a few decades ago. Like many celebrity chefs after him, he built an empire and opened restaurants in Las Vegas, including a second location of Aureole and Charlie Palmer Steak. And in the last decade, he also worked on a hotel and restaurant in San Francisco, the Mystic Hotel and its Burritt Room + Tavern — which he sold to Palihotel in 2018.

And recently we learned that his restaurant group is taking over and revamping several properties in Paso Robles, including the Paso Robles Inn and The Piccolo.

But his local flagship has always been Dry Creek Kitchen at the Hotel Healdsburg, where he became famous — both locally and on the Food Network — for throwing his Pigs & Pinot benefit bash each spring, which also briefly became an annual pairing challenge on Top Chef.

Now, as the Chronicle reports, the 66-year-old chef and entrepreneur will have a shiny new project to call his own in Healdsburg, a new hotel called Appellation Healdsburg, and a 200-seat restaurant called Folia Bar & Kitchen. The 108-room property, just north of the quaint town square, will also boast an 89-seat rooftop bar and lounge called Andys Beeline Rooftop, which Palmer describes as a "nighttime hideaway" that he also hopes will become a sunset cocktail destination in the Dry Creek Valley.

The Chronicle describes, via Palmer, features of Folia which will include "a live carving station for charcuterie and bread service delivered via custom-designed carts." The restaurant will serve a daily selection of five to six fresh breads from Quail & Condor Bakery, Palmer says.

The restaurant, which will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, will focus its dinner menu on fresh pastas from house-milled flours, and meats roasted via "live oak ember cooking." Large format meat dishes, meant for sharing, that Palmer mentions to the paper include a ribeye steak for two, legs of lamb, racks of Kurobuta pork, and Liberty duck. Seafood will be sourced from Hog Island Oyster Co.

"Healdsburg is becoming the culinary capital of Wine Country,” Palmer boasts, speaking to the Chronicle. "There’s not much we don’t have, but this is going to add to it."

The hotel has just opened up reservations starting in September, and the Chronicle says the restaurants should be open by late September.

Appelation Healdsburg - 101 Dovetail Lane, Healdsburg

A new office tower, which would be the first to be built in the Financial District since 2018 and would include the first five-star hotel to be constructed in the city in three decades, is moving along at 530 Sansome Street, with a developer who's bullish about downtown's future.

We first learned about this 41-story project from Related California last summer, and it's slated to rise on the site of a the San Francisco Fire Department's Fire Station 13 at 530 Sansome — with a replacement firehouse planned on the opposite side of the block, at 447 Battery Street. The elongated glass and steel tower, designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill, include 24 stories of "bespoke" Class A office space in the top of the tower, and a planned 15-story, five-star hotel below it, with two floors of amenities in between. It would extend almost the length of the block of Washington Street between Sansome and Battery, and rise 544 feet, one block east of the Transamerica Pyramid.

Now, as the Chronicle reports, the building's environmental impact report (EIR) comes out today, we have a few new renderings, and if the project gets its permits later this year, Related is hoping start construction by late 2026.

Matt Witte, a principal at Related California, tells the paper, "[It's] the right building in the right location at the right time."

The office market remains in the dumps in downtown San Francisco, with a historic 37% vacancy rate. But Witte previously told the Chronicle last summer that the office component of the project was geared toward "very specific types of tenants that historically have been interested in smaller floor plates with views."

Related California President Gino Canori echoes Witte's thoughts, telling the Chronicle, "This started out as a contrarian bet, but as we dug in deeper and looked at the market, how it is evolving and maturing out of COVID, it doesn’t seem so contrarian any more. It’s a story about San Francisco’s recovery, about the city coming out of a tough time and building something everyone can be proud of."

This was originally a pet project of former District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who began seeking out a developer to acquire the fire station site — and build a replacement — in 2017. Related California was selected, but the entitlements for the project didn't come until 2020, and then the pandemic hit.

But Related California is now making the same bet as New York developer Michael Shvo, who took on the renovation of the Transamerica Pyramid mid-pandemic and has since reopened it. Both developers seem to agree that seekers of prime, Class A office space are still there and looking around downtown, and those businesses will be part of downtown San Francisco's eventual full recovery, slow as it may be.

The Chronicle notes that even though we often hear about that 37% office vacancy rate, when you look at the top-tier buildings and office floors with views, the vacancy rate drops to 6.9%. And brokers say that lease rates for those top-tier buildings are as high if not higher than they were in 2019.

The city is also getting something out of this deal beside the fancy new firehouse (also designed by SOM) — Related is pledging $4.5 million toward an affordable housing project in Chinatown, at 774 Pacific Street.

Previously: Major Developer Gambles on Downtown SF, Proposes 41-Story Office/Hotel Tower on Fire Station Site

In the latest debt trouble for a San Francisco hotel, lender Deutsche Bank AG just sued the owners of the Stanford Court Hotel for allegedly missing payments on their $105 million mortgage, and for supposedly allowing elevators to go unrepaired.

You know it’s bad out there for SF luxury hotels when even the Four Seasons is defaulting on its loans, and could be foreclosed upon. That foreclosure bug has spread to yet another storied SF hotel, as the Chronicle reports that Nob Hill’s Stanford Court Hotel is being sued over missed mortgage payments, and its lender is seeking to foreclose upon the place.

The lender here is Deutsche Bank AG. They’re suing the hotel’s owner Pine & Powell Partners (which is based in LA, despite the street-crossing name that references the hotel’s location), and that company’s founder, real estate investor Michael Rosenfeld. The suit claims Pine & Powell Partners has failed to make payments on its $105 million mortgage to the bank, though it is not mentioned much the bank is supposedly owed.

Interestingly, there is also a busted-elevator subplot to this legal conflict.

“If the elevator modernization work is not completed before an upcoming professional conference that will be taking place at the property in mid-January — which has historically been a significant revenue generator for the property — the technician will be required to work double shifts each day, simply to service the property’s elevators,” the lawsuit claims. “Defendants are aware of these issues, yet still refuse to consent to the elevator maintenance contract.”

This is clearly a reference to the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, which just wrapped up Thursday. The suit was filed Wednesday, per the Chronicle, so the lawyers clearly wrote this prior to this week.  

The lawsuit seeks to hand over the Stanford Court Hotel to an appointed receiver, presumably so Deutsche Bank can sell the place. But San Francisco luxury hotels for sale are a dime a dozen these days, so this may not be as lucrative of an endgame that Deutsche Bank is hoping for.

Related: Now the Proper Hotel on Mid-Market Appears to Be In Financial Distress [SFist]

Image: Stanford Court

One of two boutique, luxury hotels that were meant to be part of a renaissance on mid-Market Street — which never really materialized — the Proper Hotel at Seventh and Market, now looks like it might fall into the hands of its lender.

As the SF Business Times reports, the Santa Monica-based Kor Group, which opened the hotel in 2017 with a bold new renovation by designer Kelly Werstler, has defaulted on its loan payments. The company took out a $28 million loan in 2021, which was expected to mature in February 2024, with an optional extension to February 2025, and the default notice was issued by lender Westbrook Partners on November 25.

A trust agreement reportedly outlines a scenario in which Westbook Partners takes over sole ownership of the hotel and leases it back to Kor Group, which could be a possibility moving forward, as the Business Times notes. And it's possible that Kor Group will remain on as an owner, with a February deadline now set for a potential sale.

Of all the hotel turnovers in the city over the last decade, both the Proper and the former Good Hotel (now the Hotel Garrett) at Seventh and Mission have suffered the most from the ongoing, very active drug market that has centered around UN Plaza, Sixth Street, and the nearby Nancy Pelosi Federal Building. While the face of mid-Market has certainly changed over 15 years, most recently with the openings of the nearby Line Hotel and the still mostly vacant IKEA shopping complex and food court, the fentanyl crisis and homelessness have generally kept the area less than savory. This is reflected in the Proper's Yelp reviews, which are summed up along the lines of one that begins, "THE LOCATION IS ROUGHHH."

Kor Group bought the very downmarket former Renoir Hotel in 2013 and undertook a multi-year renovation, following a general trend of gentrification that has seen a fair bit of new construction and cosmetic strange on this stretch of Market Street.

This latest financial news about the Proper comes shortly after the two-year-old Line Hotel, one block away, announced that it was being taken over by Hilton Curio Collection. And the news comes as major hotels around Union Square have been surrendered to their lenders, like the enormous Hilton Downtown SF Union Square.

Most recently, two weeks ago, we learned that the Hyatt Regency across from the Moscone Center in SoMa, was also being surrendered to its lender amid a depressed convention market in San Francisco that doesn't show signs of a quick recovery.

San Francisco's largest hotel, which is also one of the country's largest hotels outside of Las Vegas, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, is headed for auction. And there are some hints that a buyer could convert it into apartment housing.

As San Francisco struggles to regain its tourism traffic and to reestablish itself as a favorite convention destination, it could potentially lose a large chunk of downtown hotel rooms in a major hotel-to-housing conversion. The SF Business Times reports that potential buyers are lining up for the Hilton San Francisco Union Square as well as the nearby Parc 55 hotel, which are up for auction as a package deal. And it could be that there are some disruptors in the mix who would seek to convert one or both properties to apartment housing — though city leaders might have a thing or two to say about such a conversion.

The two hotels were surrendered to their lender in June 2023, in a shocking turn of events that came just a week before the EU-based Westfield corporation made a similar decision to walk away from its downtown mall. In both cases, the owners made the decision to stop making payments on massive loans for properties that were no longer worth what they previously were, in the post-pandemic economy.

Together, the Hilton and the Parc 55 represent nearly 3,000 rooms, or nearly 10% of the city's total hotel stock. But the massive, block-wide Hilton, with its 1,921 rooms, is now "functionally obsolete," as hotel consultant Alan Reay tells the Business Times, unless a major convention is in town.

A bondholder report on the property suggests that business has suffered recently due to the large hotel-worker strike, which has maintained a loud picket-line presence at the Hilton's front entrance — leading to cancellations. And the report doesn't paint a very positive picture for the property even if they concede to union demands for higher wages, saying, "Any significant increases in payroll will likely offset any gains in Occupancy or ADR [average daily rate] the properties might achieve in 2025."

The two hotels are on track for a combined net operating loss of $30 million this year, though they did turn an $8 million profit in 2023.

"I think some of the higher probability buyers are looking to convert hotels to apartments, like is going on with offices to apartments," says Reay, speaking to the Business Times.

The hotels are currently under the receivership of Hotel Asset Value Enhancement, which has until March 31, 2025 to close a deal with a buyer. If they fail to do so, the lender, JPMorgan Chase, will then have until July 15 to foreclose, as the Business Times reports.

A conversion to housing for one or both properties would entail a fair bit of risk and some major approval headaches in SF's notoriously slow bureaucracy.

City leaders — including a new crop of supervisors joining the Board of Supervisors and a new mayor — might not like the idea of losing two or three thousand hotel rooms, especially if the convention market bounces back. However, such big numbers would put a dent in the 82,000 new housing units that the city is on the hook to approve by 2031, under its state-approved Housing Element plan.

Previously: Owner of SF's Largest Hotel, the Hilton Union Square, Is Walking Away, Surrendering It to Lender

After only two years as the boutique Line Hotel, the 12-story hotel portion of the building at 950 Market Street that also houses the Serif condo development is going to become a Hilton property as of December.

The SF Business Times reports that the Line Hotel operators are stepping away from the property and have notified the state of a "mass layoff" event on December 10. But, they say, the hotel will become part of the Hilton Curio Collection as of that date, and Hilton is expected to rehire all or most of the 86-person staff.

Line Hotel is a boutique brand that was created a decade ago by New York-based Sydell Group, starting with the first Line property in Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood. Other Line locations are in Austin and Washington DC. Earlier this year, Hilton announced it had acquired a controlling interest in Sydell Group, which owns the NoMad brand. But SoHo House owns The Line as well The Ned hotel brands, and this Line takeover appears to be separate from that acquisition.*

It's not clear what the new branding for this location will be — Curio Collection properties tend to retain their own individual branding, as the Business Times notes, like the Juniper Hotel in Cupertino. The Curio Collection currently boasts 170 hotels in 42 countries, with another 84 coming in the pipeline.

The 236-room Mid-Market property lost its upscale restaurant Tenderheart back in March, and since then, the hotel's website has only been advertising its rooftop bar and lounge Rise Over Run, which offers a limited food menu.

With the transition to becoming a Hilton property, presumably a new restaurant will be installed in the street-level space.

And, as the Business Times notes, the hotel will then benefit from bookings from Hilton Honors members, in what looks to be a slightly better upcoming year for convention traffic than 2024.

*This article has been corrected to show that The Line brand is not part of Sydell Group and is owned by SoHo House Inc., and any rebranding by Hilton will not include The Line at all.

The former Le Meridien hotel on Clay Street near Embarcadero Center was reborn earlier this year as The Jay, a Marriott Autograph Collection hotel. And now, the hotel's main fine-dining restaurant opens next week as Prelude, a Southern-inspired prix-fixe spot with California style.

The chef behind Prelude is Celtin Hendrickson-Jones, who has worked in the kitchens at Morimoto Napa, Picco in Larkspur, Michelin-starred Niku Steakhouse, and Michelin two-starred Commis in Oakland. And as he takes on his first executive chef role, Hendrickson-Jones is turning to the food of his maternal grandmother from Alabama, and flavors of the south, in combination with high-end technique and California produce.

The Southern influence will be seen in dishes like a cornbread financier served with Hokkaido uni butter; and hominy grits from Tierra Farms, which will be served with rotating seasonal garnishes.

In addition to the nightly prix fixe ($145), an a la carte menu will be offered in the salon, including dishes like anchovy toast ($10) and a dirty rice-stuffed chicken wing ($9), as well as full entrees like a hangar steak and a dry-aged pork chop.

The moody interior by hotel and restaurant design firm AvroKO takes its inspiration from the eucalyptus groves of San Francisco's Presidio, incorporating deep green and warm wood tones, and custom stained glass from Oakland's Glow Glass Studio.

The dining rooms are outfitted with banquettes lined in deep green leather and mohair fabric. And local artist Kate Greenberg was commissioned to create solid wood plinths for the banquette surrounds.

The bar is made of eucalyptus wood, and will feature a cocktail program from bar director Franco Bilbaeno, who has previously worked at Michael Mina, Angler, and Niku Steakhouse.

The Niku Steakhouse connections are no accident, as Prelude is the newest restaurant in the Omakase Restaurant Group, which also operates Michelin-starred Omakase, Dumpling Time, and Okane in San Francisco. The group also runs the other restaurant in The Jay hotel property, The Third Floor, as well as the breakfast-and-lunch restaurant Rosemary & Pine near Showplace Square.

Prelude opens on or after August 26, and reservations are now available here. See sample prix-fixe menu below.*

Prelude - 433 Clay Street - Opening August 20

*This post has been updated with a revised opening date.

The Michelin organization has just released its first ever guide to and rankings of US hotels, and like the Michelin Guides to restaurants dole out stars, the new guide has given "key" rankings to 124 hotels across the country.

While we know that three Michelin stars are a distinction reserved for very high-end, typically very expensive and refined restaurants across the world, Michelin "key" rankings are new. Michelin inspectors fanned out across the cities and regions that Michelin currently covers for their restaurants: Atlanta, California, Chicago, Colorado, Florida, New York, and Washington D.C.

Reflecting the standards that Michelin is setting for hospitality and hotel quality, only 11 hotel and resort properties across the country received three-key ratings.

"Just like the famous Stars that indicate the best culinary experiences in the Michelin Guide restaurant selection, the Michelin Keys reveal accommodations in the Guide’s hotel selection that offer the most outstanding stays," the company says. "They are a new benchmark for travelers, qualifying each hotel experience in broader terms than simple amenities."

Three keys indicates an "extraordinary stay," two keys an "exceptional" one, and one key is "a very special stay."

The local places getting three keys include SingleThread Inn in Healdsburg, Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, and both Meadowood and Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley. Canyon Ranch Woodside, on the Peninsula, also received three keys, as did two hotels in Los Angeles, The Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air.

SingleThread, in particular, "might be one of the most luxurious experiences" in California, the inspectors wrote.

Thirty-three hotel properties received two Michelin keys, including the recently renovated Madrona Inn in Healdsburg, The Battery in San Francisco (which has just 14 guest rooms), and the Four Seasons Hotel Embarcadero (which is actually at 222 Sansome).

Others in the two-key tier include The Montage in Healdsburg, Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, the Milliken Creek Inn & Spa in Napa, the Stavrand in Guerneville, the North Block in Yountville, and Bardessono in Yountville.

NorCal spots that were deemed one-key or "very special" places to stay include Stanly Ranch in Napa, and 1 Hotel in San Francisco (the former Hotel Vitale).

All the hotel listings and rankings are now available for free on the Michelin website.

To date, Michelin has only done a hotel guide for France, and they are getting ready to announce hotel guides for Spain, Italy, and Japan in the coming weeks.

Top image: The Madrona Inn in Healdsburg, via the Michelin Guide

You know it’s hard times in the luxury hospitality racket when even the owner of a Four Seasons hotel can’t pay their bills, as the Four Seasons Embarcadero owner reportedly hasn’t made their loan payments in three months.

The Florida-based real estate investment form Westbrook Partners would probably like a do-over on their $126.6 million purchase of the downtown San Francisco hotel that they would rename the Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at Embarcadero. Months after that purchase, COVID-19 came along and wiped out tourism for a couple of years. Now interest rates are about double what they were when Westbrook took out their loan on the property, and business conferences that are the bread-and-butter of upscale tourism are still not back in full force.

So it was not ideal timing to take out a $72.5 million loan on the property, which Westbrook Partners did in 2019. And now the San Francisco Business Times is reporting that Westbrook is defaulting on the loan for the Four Seasons Embarcadero, reportedly not having made payments since December. They're now $3.15 million behind on their payments on the loan, according to a March 3 notice of default.

That default notice gives Westbrook another 90 days to pay up on the payments that are in arrears, and foreclosure is a possibility if they don’t.

As we’ve noted in similar default situations, the non-payment could just be a negotiating tactic to re-do the terms of the loan with their lender. Indeed, the Business Times points out that some high-profile borrowers “purposefully default on their loans as a way to commence negotiations with their lenders,” so that may be the case here.

But this comes on the heels of Hilton SF Union Square and Parc 55 hotels both being surrendered to their lender last June, and the Chronicle reported in January that the Hilton Financial District had also defaulted on their $97 million loan.

The Four Seasons Embarcadero, which is actually several blocks from the Embarcadero,  occupies the top 11 stories of the 48-story 345 California Street building (though it uses the address of the adjacent 222 Sansome Street). It opened in 1986 as the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, then Loews Hotels bought it in 2015 and rebranded it as the Loews Regency. Westbrook Partners bought it to make it the Four Seasons Embarcadero in 2019, and while they did remodel the place, COVID-19 delays led to it not reopening permanently until June 2021.

A new Italian restaurant called Orafo opened in the building just last year, in February 2023.

This news does not affect the other Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco, which is at 757 Market Street (between Third and Fourth streets), or the Four Seasons Private Residences around the corner at 706 Mission Street.

Related: Owner of SF's Largest Hotel, the Hilton Union Square, Is Walking Away, Surrendering It to Lender [SFist]

Image: Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at Embarcadero via Yelp

The federal government appears to be trying to get out of a large chunk of its promised reimbursements to California cities for shelter-in-place hotels that were rented out to house the unhoused in the first two years of the pandemic. And, frankly, we would have more expected this from the Trump Administration.

Apparently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been playing fast and loose with the rule-making around how it will reimburse cities for hotel rooms that they rented in the early pandemic — rooms that were rented, in part, because FEMA pledged to reimburse most or all of the costs.

San Francisco spent a lot of money on its pandemic response, which was not limited to this hotel program — which alone cost $423 million. So far the city has sought $879 million in reimbursements from the federal government, only about a third of which has been received to date. As the Chronicle reports, FEMA is now backtracking on some of its promises, and California is vehemently pushing back, but it remains to be seen whether this will amount to another huge expense in SF's already strained budget.

The new limitation FEMA put on reimbursements, announced in October, was that the agency would only reimburse the cost of most hotel stays up to 20 days. This is a major change from what the agency had said earlier, which was that it would reimburse the full cost of the hotels from the beginning of the pandemic through July 1, 2022, and then 90% of the cost through May 11, 2023.

At the peak of the program, the city was leasing out 2,288 rooms across 25 hotels, providing housing for around 5,000 individuals. Given how many homeless people were given extended stays in these rooms, the city could be on the hook for $114 million in unexpected, unreimbursable expenses for the program, according to City Controller Ben Rosenfield.

That figure could rise to $190 million, Rosenfield says, if FEMA also denies reimbursements for empty hotel rooms that the city stockpiled in preparation for possible COVID surges during that time — which amounted to another $76 million.

Across other California cities, they could be out $300 million in reimbursements.

"We intend to explore every option available to appeal any claims denied by FEMA Region 9 that we believe to be eligible for reimbursement, based on the guidance in effect at the time," Rosenfield tells the Chronicle.

California's Office of Emergency Services Director Nancy Ward penned a 95-page memo to FEMA last month aggressively pushing back on FEMA's rule-change, saying that the agency had "inconsistently" applied the rules across the country when it came to so-called non-congregate shelter programs. The memo included letters from city officials, including Rosenfield, who called FEMA's change an "impermissible retroactive law."

A spokesperson for Mayor London Breed told the Chronicle that the mayor was "profoundly disappointed" in FEMA's decision. And Supervisor Aaron Peskin said, "It’s not over until FEMA sings and we’re not done."

All of this would be terrible news for SF's budget, which is already facing an $800 million deficit over the next two years.

And it's not clear how much, if any, of the $423 million price tag for the hotel shelter program is going toward the repairs the hotel owners subsequently sued the city over. As we previously reported, multiple hotel owners sued for damages to their rooms during the shelter program, with the Hotel Union Square ending up with a settlement of $5.3 million, and the Tilden Hotel receiving $2.9 million.

The beloved, retro, SoCal-motel-feeling Phoenix Hotel, which has always been a charmingly out-of-place oasis in between Civic Center and the Tenderloin, may not be long for this world as the property has just hit the market for $15 million.

Whether or not the Phoenix Hotel, which has more boutique-hotel charm and a still popular restaurant/nightlife space, has seen its business suffer as badly in recent years as the nearby Best Western is not known. They're still charging $300 per night for peak times — like around Pride Weekend when the hotel courtyard becomes a prime party space — and here in the dead of winter you can stay there for $120 per night.

But the owners are testing the waters to see if the 0.87-acre property will command what they're after, which is $397 per square foot for the land — or about $40,000 per developable unit. The property is zoned to build up to 80 feet high — or about eight stories — and with the state's density bonus, it could accommodate up to 450 units, according to the listing.

The property, which sits at the decidedly dicey corner of Larkin and Eddy streets, is not exactly prime real estate at the moment — however one of the only active developers in town right now recently completed an "upscale," "middle-income" residential project nearby at Leavenworth and Jones, and it's nearly fully occupied.

The listing also touts the fact that the current hotel lease, to Bunkhouse Hotels, runs through September 30, 2025, so any potential investors would get "interim income during the entitlement process" for a residential project.

The Phoenix and its bar-restaurant Chambers have played host to New Year's Eve and Pride Weekend parties, as well as many others, for two decades now. The space was even more hopping back in the 90s and early aughts when it was known as Backflip, which was both a hip restaurant and happy hour/nightlife venue.

It remains unique in having outdoor space in the heart of the city, with an actual swimming pool — a relic of times when lots of hotels, at least in other parts of California, were built like this... places that have actually warm summers.

And it would be sad to see it go! But, you've been warned.